How Marilyn Monroe founded her own production company

During her own lifetime, Marilyn Monroe was often reduced to her physical assets: the peroxide-blond coif, the voluptuous figure, the breathy voice. And since her death, audiences have either fixated on her pinup figure or a tragic version of her as a lost little girl, exploited and helpless. Monroe gets the latter treatment in the latest film to tackle her life, Andrew Dominik's Blonde.

But the real Marilyn was an intellectual, a woman who loved to read and took acting seriously as a profession. She was also a powerful force in her own right — a star who wrested control of her career and her image from the architects of her fame, becoming one of the first women to found her own production company since silent star Mary Pickford. She also dealt a grievous blow to the Hollywood studio system in the process.

In 1954, Monroe, fed up with the vapid roles and her paltry salary at Fox, fled to New York in the middle of the night, determined to forge a life and career of her own making. She grit her teeth through the making of River of No Return at Fox, commenting, "I think I deserve a better deal than a grade-Z cowboy movie in which the acting finished second to the scenery."

But after that, Monroe returned the next terrible script she received to Daryl F. Zanuck's office with the word "trash" scrawled across the top. Then, she donned a black bob wig, dark sunglasses, and boarded a plane to Manhattan under the name Zelda Zonk.

She was joined by friend and photographer Milton Greene. Once away from the strictures of her Fox contract in Hollywood, they put into motion plans for founding Marilyn Monroe Productions.

On Jan. 7, 1955, she announced the formation of her production company to the world. As journalists and friends gathered at the home of her lawyer, Frank Delaney, a public statement signifying the existence of Marilyn Monroe Productions was read aloud. Monroe was company president, with Greene as vice president (she took 51 percent of the company and Greene 49 percent).

For both Marilyn and Hollywood, it was a revolutionary moment and a declaration of her determination to buck the limited and sexist expectations of her studio contract and public image.

"That was her way of achieving creative freedom," says Elizabeth Winder, author of Marilyn in Manhattan, about Monroe's year in New York City. "The studio owned her, and she knew that she couldn't remain in that system, but she also didn't want to give up acting. This was her way to be able to be the type of actress she knew she could be, and always wanted to be. There wasn't really a way for her to do it in a smaller way."

As Monroe told journalist Edward R. Murrow at the time, "It's not that I object to doing musicals and comedies — in fact, I rather enjoy them — but I'd like to do dramatic parts, too."

The studio wasn't about to let one of their most lucrative stars go without a fight, immediately suing Monroe for breach of contract. Over an entire year of negotiations, they eventually struck a deal between Fox and her production company. The non-exclusive deal won Monroe a check for past earnings, a new salary of $100,000 for four movies over a seven-year period, and approval over all major aspects of her productions, including script, director and cinematographer.

"She was basically powerless before," adds Winder. "They'd say 'Take this role,' and she'd be stuck. Being to be able to do all that was a complete switch. She loved acting, she loved her work and she wanted to be able to take on roles and work in a way that wasn't demeaning and degrading. She just wanted to live her life."

The papers heralded Monroe's new contract and victory in her legal battle as a historic moment. Time called her a "shrewd businesswoman," while the Los Angeles Mirror championed it as "one of the greatest single triumphs ever won by an actress." The Morning Telegraph played it up and, of course, leaned into her appearance, writing, "The bitter battle is over — Marilyn Monroe, a five-foot-five-and-a-half-inch blonde weighing 118 alluringly distributed pounds, has brought Twentieth Century Fox to its knees."

But in spite of their casually sexist language, journalists weren't exaggerating the impact of Monroe's victory. The Hollywood studio system that had an ironclad hold over its stars since the 1930s was already in a period of decline, its control slowly being eroded by the loss of exhibition thanks to the Paramount Decrees and other economic factors. And Monroe's founding of her own production company was considered a major blow to the studio system as it once was.

It gave her a nearly unmatched power, allowing a star of her stature to control her own career rather than being at the mercy of a capricious studio and its mogul. Already weakened, the studio system could not withstand losing its hold on its most valuable assets, its stars. Within the next several years, the studios would continue to decline, clearing the path for the "New Hollywood" of the 1960s. Monroe even kickstarted a trend, with stars such as Frank Sinatra, Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier, and Barbra Streisand following in her self-determining path in the years to come.

But there's no hint of Monroe's status as a powerful businesswoman in most of her biographies, and it's certainly not covered in Netflix's Blonde. Writer-director Andrew Dominik is far more interested in a portrayal of Monroe that robs her of any agency, seeing her as purely a tool and plaything for the men in her life as she spends her days hunting for a father figure. Blonde isn't the first film to produce such an exploitative and reductive portrait of Monroe — it won't be the last.

"The culture that we live in reduces women to these caricatures," adds Winder. "With Marilyn, that's so easy to do because of her damage and the roles that she played, allowing people to make money off of a bimbo image. It's so much easier to just go along with that cliche than it is to do the work of understanding who she really was. It's easier for people to take a look at the cartoon version, and say, 'Okay, I understand what that is,' than it is for them to open themselves up to the possibility of nuance. Marilyn was always trying so hard to be seen for who she really was, someone who loved to read and who loved to create and who had incredible ideas."

When she won her legal battle, Monroe and her company had already secured the rights for The Prince and the Showgirl, which was to be directed by her co-star, Laurence Olivier. She would travel to London to film it. It became one of only two films her production company would make.

Prior to The Prince and the Showgirl, Marilyn Monroe Productions also made Bus Stop, in many ways the pinnacle of everything Monroe had fought for. An adaptation of a William Inge play directed by Broadway impresario Joshua Logan, Bus Stop granted Monroe her first truly serious role as Cherie. It was an opportunity for her to channel her experiences in the Actors' Studio into a character for the first time.

Sadly, Marilyn Monroe Productions didn't go on to make a string of hits, ceasing after only two films. Monroe's life began to spiral into tragedy at that point, ultimately ending in her 1962 death at only 36 years old.

Today, she's remembered far more as a girl standing over a subway grate with her skirt billowing than she is as a trailblazer. "She's been frozen in time," Winder says. "People are so resistant to taking another look at her. That's because even today, men and women have such a difficult time reconciling all of the different sides of what a woman can be. Especially one like Marilyn, who had extreme vulnerability. For some reason, it's hard for people to then say, 'Oh, but she also did this and this and this, which was incredible.' They're mutually exclusive."

Winder believes that if Monroe had gone on to conquer her demons, including addiction and mental-health challenges, she would have become a producer and director. "She really understood directing," Winder says. "She would have had confidence in her own opinions, and that would have grown and solidified. I see the second part of her career as making movies and producing movies that really touch people, and are interesting and thought-provoking, and the opposite of studio action and franchise movies. I like to imagine her as a producer."

It's a far better vision, one more worthy of Monroe's spirit and ambitions, than what the legend usually receives.

Related content:

• 8 Marilyn Monroe books to read after you watch Blonde
• Ana de Armas on Blonde's explicit scenes: 'Those are harder for people to watch than for me to make'
• 17 actresses who've played Marilyn Monroe